Cultivating A Cult Audience; Fast Company Magazine Takes 'Community of Readers' Idea To New Extremes

By ALEX KUCZYNSKI

Published: December 14, 1998

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 8—
The conference room in the Sheraton New Orleans hotel was quiet, save for the shoo-shoo-shoo deep-breathing sounds coming from the 80 men and women in nametags silently circling the room. After a minute, the seminar leader held up her hand to halt the mute crowd.

''Now, strike the pose of a hero,'' she instructed. ''Strike the statue of the gods and goddesses that you are!'' She urged the group to cry out how they felt when they thought of themselves as heroes. There was palpable hesitation, then a human resources manager from Wells Fargo, a string of pearls around her neck, lifted her arms in the air.

''I am a thunderbolt!'' she shouted. A man in a Hawaiian-print shirt exclaimed ''Hallelujah!'' as he posed, one arm extended behind him as if he were preparing to toss a discus. A computer company executive in high heels put her hands defiantly on her hips and cried, hesitantly: ''You, you -- you fabulous goddess you!''

If it sounds like an EST seminar or some sort of Tony Robbins inspirational jamboree, it wasn't. It was, in fact, one of several instructional sessions offered at a conference -- actually, the organizers prefer the term ''gathering'' -- given this month by Fast Company, a technology-oriented business magazine aimed at young entrepreneurs. A feel-good business bible for the generation that never leaves home without a Palm Pilot, Fast Company is published by Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

Fast Company drew 400 people to this, its second ''Real Time'' conference. And while the magazine may be the first to hold a conference at which a former Secretary of Labor, Robert B. Reich, led an impromptu kazoo concert, it is not alone in its mission. To solidify the ties with their readers -- and their readers' checkbooks -- publishers now organize events for subscribers and readers to attend.

''Simply selling a magazine is just not enough anymore,'' said Alan M. Webber, one of Fast Company's two founding editors. Besides the conferences, the three-year-old magazine encourages readers to form discussion groups, a network of 9,300 readers called the ''Company of Friends.''

The principle of bringing readers in other than through the pages of a magazine is also at work elsewhere. In the last two years, Jay MacDonald, the chief executive of MacDonald Communications, a New York media company that owns Working Woman and Working Mother magazines, has started four annual conferences -- not only as an instrument with which to extend the brand identities of his two magazines, but as profit-making ventures.

Forbes magazine began the Forbes Management Conference Group in 1995. McGraw-Hill's Business Week plays host to 8 to 12 conferences a year. And Time Warner's Fortune employs a staff of 20 simply for its conference activity.

But where other publications' conferences promote specific objectives, Fast Company seems to use its as a kind of focus group.

''Frequently, business magazines have conferences because you're able to actually have a focus and a theme and a practical outcome,'' Mr. Webber said. ''But one of the things that's different with ours is that we view our gatherings as a part of the editorial product. Other magazines have separate conference arms that are hived off from the editorial group.''

Mr. Webber -- who is fond of saying ''Remember, it's not a magazine, it's a movement'' -- is a trim 50-year-old who, along with William C. Taylor, grew tired of work as an editor at The Harvard Business Review four years ago. They created a 103-page prototype and, as Mr. Talyor put it, ''after a year of wandering the canyons of Manhattan,'' sold a majority stake to Mr. Zuckerman.

Mr. Taylor added that Mr. Zuckerman's leadership had been strictly hands off -- a contrast to what may politely be described as his usual, hands-on dedication to other properties like The Daily News of New York and U.S. News & World Report.

Fast Company, which is based in Boston, is not your parents' business magazine. It styles itself as a guidebook for the ambitious yet sensitive young businessperson facing a swiftly changing and increasingly ruthless economy. The magazine's goal: to encourage readers to think in contrarian terms about the business world. Recent articles include ''Money! Power! Fame! (And Other Ways to Self-Destruct)'' and ''Green is Good,'' a piece about ecological mindfulness in the corporate world. The magazine's conference -- while light on hard information and heavy on motivational speakers -- was in essence Fast Company's version of a three-day M.B.A.

Judging from the conference here, it is also a chance for those working in technology to work on their people skills. Michael A. Gort, an information technology consultant from Old Greenwich, Conn., pointed out that working in software, for example, can be lonely. ''You can get alienated in this field,'' he said. ''You can now have an entire product team that develops a product without ever meeting each other.''

Peter A. Kalish, the president of a software design company in Orem, Utah, said that he read Fast Company because no other business magazine focused on issues with the same ''human touch.''